Lolita at 50

PublicBroadcasting.Net ^ | 08/18/08 | Colette Bancroft

[durasell]

Ole Vlad WAS a hippie. I submit the following:

A)Of Russian heritage. He was from a communist country!

B)His obsession was butterflies — a well known symbol of hippies.

C)He wrote poems! Pale Fire.

D)He lived in France for a time.

E) He knew Peter Sellers, a well known actor famous for playing hippies wearing lovebeads. Lovebeads!

F) He lived in Ithaca, a hippie stronghold.

[Buckhead]

i think lolita is a creepy, dreadful book. i hated the writing and i still
feel nabokov wrote it because he was at least a latent pedophile.
i’m a fan of joyce, austen, proust, waugh, twain, flaubert, etc., so i am
not unlettered. but i really did not catch the beauty of the book.
i must admit, the opening sequence of the kubrick movie, with james
mason going after peter sellers is highly entertaining. but rest of
the movie misses point of the book.

WIFE-O-BUCKHEAD

[MEGoody]

It doesn’t even mention child sex.

Of course. Anyone who has read the book knows that Humbert just wanted to be a father figure to her. ;)

[Constitution Day]

I’ve never read the third book in that trilogy; I will have to check it out. Thank you.

[Borges]

The ‘Love Story’ angle was a marketing invention not something Nabokov said nor something the book conveys. He intended it as a metaphor for a love of Americana and the English language.

[Borges]

It’s extremely difficult! He was writing his version of a Russian family chronicle like Anna Karenin.

[Borges]

It’s implied but never described. That’s the difference between literature and porn.

[durasell]

G) Lolita was directed by Stanley Kubrick, another immigrant from a COMMUNIST COUNTRY who grew up in The Bronx, just blocks — BLOCKS! — from where Leon Trotsky had once lived.

H)He moved to this country and didn’t even his the decency to change his name to something American, like Steve or Howard.

[boogerbear]

Not all morality tales are from the positive perspective. You can have a good story about bad people which thus tells it’s not a good thing but tells you that in a good way.

Lolita isn’t about sex with kids being a good thing, it’s about it very much being a bad thing. That’s what makes it a good story.

[Borges]

"i still feel nabokov wrote it because he was at least a latent pedophile."

That's hilarious. Was Dostoevsky a closet ax murderer for writing Crime and Punishment? Was Flaubert a closet adulterer? BTW Nabokov was happily married for over 50 years but don't let that slow you down.

[Borges]

Kubrick was born in NYC.

[Steely Tom]

I've never read the book, but I've seen the move twice. The first time was as a boy about the age of Lolita; it was on TV (in a somewhat bowderlized form). The second time was when I rented it to watch with my movie-obsessed, foreign-born wife.

For me, the most important scene in the movie is the last one. Lolita has married a young lunk named Biff (or Baff, I can't remember, and neither can Humbert). They've set up household in a tiny apartment, and are planning to move to Alaska.

Lolita has become just a normal housewife. She's lost her power, and seems just utterly normal and unremarkable. The spell is broken for Humbert. She's become exactly what he'd hoped to save her from. She's no longer on a pedistal, and can never again be on a pedistal of any kind.

Humbert loved Lolita as a goddess, a symbol, and she was just a typical American kid. She had no comprehension of what he saw in her.

[Borges]

That’s pretty much on the money. The Kubrick film also rather softened the books grim ending.

[Buckhead]

apparently nabokov was molested at age 12 by his mother’s brother
who was 37 at the time. apparently, the man molested him numerous
times and then left nabokov his fortune when he died. also, flaubert
was not a closet adulterer. he was simply an adulterer. just finished
a bio on him.

[Borges]

My point being that inferring such things from fiction is unwise. Lolita is virtually universally regarded as one of the great examples of English prose...

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

[Steely Tom]

That’s pretty much on the money. The Kubrick film also rather softened the books grim ending.

Thanks.

For what it's worth, I thought it was a brilliant movie, and I assume the book is brilliant as well. At least, if you consider it "brilliant" to have chosen one of the most intimate and mysterious aspects of the human condition, analyzed it to perfection, and then built a story that is funny, tragic, and unforgettable around that analysis.

Humbert, in middle age, thinks he's discovered what's best in life, and tries to grab it and put it in a little bell jar to enjoy forever. The transcendent splendor that delights him is owned by a little bozo who values nothing other than makeup, movie stars, and rock n' roll music. She squanders his treasure while he's trying to build a shrine around it.

Also funny, as I recall, is her husband, to whom Humbert is this old man who is somehow related to his wife. The fact that he was once involved with her in a romantic sense goes right over his head; he can't imagine that this old fart is any kind of a rival. Perhaps because Lolita never took him seriously; the audience is left to wonder.

[Constitution Day]

Hmmm...

Sounds daunting, but I will still give it a go. Thanks!

[Buckhead]

i have yet to read a bio on an important writer whose life is not
intimately reflected in their writing. again, i’m speaking of flaubert,
joyce, fitzgerald, cheever, twain, waugh. granted, i’m simply posting
my feelings for nabokov. i also dislike henry miller and
tropic of capricorn. norman lear is universally regarded as a genius
for creating archie bunker, however, i never laughed at or enjoyed
the show. i found it to be a horror.

[durasell]

Kubrick was born in NYC.

---

...or so the Soviets would have liked us to believe!

[Borges]

that’s a point of view that Nabokov used to poke fun at in his lectures. What does anyone really know about Shakespeare, Tolstoy (before he became a moralist) and so forth. Henry Miller’s work is unsubtle and sexually explicit. Nabokov’s is most defeintely not. You seem to dislike anti-heroes.